Re-voicing Cultural Landscapes: Narratives, Perspectives, and Performances of Marginalised Intangible Cultural Heritage / Rcl: Ich (2021-2023)

JPICH – Cultural Heritage, Identities & Perspectives: Responding to Changing Societies

Re-voicing cultural landscapes: narratives, perspectives, and performances of marginalised intangible cultural heritage (RCL: ICH)

Europe’s national origins are often described as culturally homogenous. Yet over 200 national minorities have found recognition through the European Charter for Regional and Minority Languages, and 640 European languages are thought by UNESCO to be critically endangered. Clearly the picture is more complicated than meets the eye. Key in nations’ cultural landscapes is intangible cultural heritage (‘ICH’). Through ICH, minority cultures express their distinct identities. ICH is imbricated in this complex cultural context, where societal forces and demographic change are at play over time, and the discreteness of minority-majority gives way to more fluid identities for individuals and communities. Yet majority narratives are still powerful in creating imaginative geographies of minority cultures – through literature, television, tourist destination-marketing – often constructed by an external gaze. This dominance can mean the minority culture is less visible, less resilient, fragmented, and so marginalised.

Using archival and desk research, primary data, and creative practice-based research – compared across minority cultures in the UK (Cornwall), Netherlands (Fryslân), Latvia and Estonia (Livonian) – we aim to better understand the interplay between majority and minority narratives, perspectives, and performances of ICH, to make marginalised cultural landscapes more visible and resilient, and produce impactful insights to inform local communities to (inter)national policy-makers.

We address Topic 1, particularly ‘How can different groups provide different perceptions of and perspectives on heritage? How can we attune heritage to these different perceptions and perspectives?’; and Topic 2, considering links between heritage and identity across individuals, societies, and geographical levels.
Our research seeks new knowledge about the socio-spatial geographies of existing heritage challenges. We intend that stakeholders use insights to change policies, practices, or behaviours to make marginalised ICH more visible and resilient. Longer-term, we hope to impact the visibility and resilience of minority cultures by re-voicing marginalised ICH.

Keywords: intangible cultural heritage, minority, marginalised, majority, cultural landscape

The JPI Cultural Heritage project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 699523

 

More here.

The University of Latvia Livonian Institute (Latvia) along with project partners from University of Groningen (Netherlands), University of Tartu Institute of Estonian and General Linguistics (Estonia) and leader of the project – Falmouth University (United Kingdom) have received funding through the joint transnational call ‘Cultural Heritage, Identities & Perspectives: Responding to Changing Societies’, organised by the European Joint Programming Initiative Cultural Heritage.